Filmmaker Terence
Malick attempts numerous audacious and foolhardy things
in the lyrical,
trance-like 2005 historical drama THE NEW WORLD, pulling off some of them
beautifully. Among his victories is giving us tabloid-bait actor Colin Farrell
as a character who would have to sign any motel register as "John Smith."
And yet you don't giggle.
Yes indeed, it's
Malick's impressionist retelling of the Pocahontas story and the settling of
Jamestown, Virginia. It envisions the childhood of Anglo-America as an
experience of first-love adolescent romance and heartbreak, the bittersweet
deflowering of a virgin continent. With the canny casting of Farrell the feature
manages the formidable achievement of reclaiming the Pocahontas legend from
elementary-school pageants and the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time Disney
musical cartoon POCAHONTAS, with its chorus line of raccoons
and singing Mel Gibson. In fact, the `P' word is never spoken here.
